On October 17, about 550,000 people by the government’s count marched across France over living costs, amid arson, looting and around 1,200 arrests. The Gateway Pundit headlined the rioters ‘Islamo-Marxist’, a term no official it quotes uses. “Islamo-Marxist” is a verdict noun: one word that hands down the judgment before any fact arrives, here fusing a faith and a politics into one body with one intent. On The Gateway Pundit’s own page, signed by Cullen Linebarger, the word appears only in the headline and the opening sentence. The fourth paragraph slides to “red-green rioters”. The only person the page describes as charged is a hooded 15-year-old in Marseille, and it gives him no faith or ideology. Set it beside the day’s numbers. The interior ministry counted about 550,000 marchers at 110 marches; the CGT and student groups said about 800,000, asking for “lower prices”. None of the outlets above gives the religion or origin of anyone arrested. CNN counts protesters, the BBC counts arrests, Breitbart carries the minister’s “Far-Left”. The headline rides us and them: an unknown few among hundreds of thousands are made to stand for a whole faith, the way the other side’s one member always stands for all. The tell to carry into the next headline: a faith’s name where no person, charge or count stands behind it. The label was not new on October 17; Robert Semonsen used it in an October 1 Gateway Pundit headline about the earlier school protests. The fires, the looting and the injured officers are real. What the word adds is a religion to fear, and what it takes off the page is the wage, the pension and the price the marchers named.
